Carrie B. Kilgore
First Woman Admitted to Practice Law in the United States
1836 – 1908 A.D.

Carrie Burnham Kilgore, the first woman admitted to practice law in the United States. In 1864 she was graduated with the degree of doctor of medicine, and a year later came back to Philadelphia and began reading Blackstone. When she appeared as a lawyer, the innovation excited the ridicule of the press, bar and bench.

When she argued before the State Supreme Court her right to the elective franchise, the chief justice pronounced her address “an able and exhaustive argument.”

In 1886 she was admitted to the federal courts, and in 1890 to the United States Supreme Court.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.